Cambodia 2000: The More That Things Change

In 1991, I visited Cambodia for the first time.
In 1992, my wife left Cambodia for the first time...

And in the year 2000, our children, for the first time, saw a country unlike anything they had ever known. The nine articles below describe our experiences.

Part One: The Quarter-Ton World Tour
Part Two: "I See Cambodia!"
Part Three: To Kompong Som and Back
Part Four: Angkor, Snakes, and Khmer Krahom
>Part Five: Artists, Pringles, and Fish in the Streets
Part Six: Two Parties
Part Seven: "There has been sporadic shooting throughout the night..."
Part Eight: Goodbyes
Part Nine: Travelers and Conquerors

Cambodia 2000:
Part One: The Quarter-Ton World Tour

It is August, and I'm in a second-story office in Chicago's New Chinatown. Take away the pictures of Angkor Wat, take away the travel brochures on the table in front of me, and the room would work well as a set for a 1940s detective film.

On the wall, there are a few framed, yellowed documents. I lean closer to read one. The letterhead is from the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The letter is dated April 18, 1975: one day after the fall of Phnom Penh to the communist Khmer Rouge.

"Dear Mr. Sunnary:

With the closure of the U.S. mission in Phnom Penh making it impossible to continue your employment, I wish to express to you my appreciation for your loyal and capable service... I am particularly proud of the loyalty you displayed during those last trying weeks in Phnom Penh when, despite great personal risk, you continued to serve with complete dedication..."

I look at the man seated behind the desk, and I try to imagine him twenty-five years ago, halfway around the world, going to work each day in a doomed city, besieged by rockets.

Loyalty. Capable service. Dedication. If I had any doubts about the travel agent my wife has chosen, they are gone now.

This will be my second trip to Cambodia. My first trip, in 1991, was shortly before the United Nations began a massive peacekeeping effort designed to resolve the country's seemingly endless civil war. For my wife, it will be her first trip back to the homeland she left in 1992.

Our trip is still many weeks away. Each day, as I sit in my office, I can see jets beginning the descent to O'hare International Airport. From time to time I can make out the distinctive profile of a 747. I watch the jets, and I begin to get goosebumps.

We left Chicago at 11AM on Sunday, November 5, flying on ANA (All Nippon Airways). This trip is very, very different from any I've taken before. I'm accustomed to travelling alone, and travelling light. Now, my wife Srey and I are accompanied by our daughter Anna, who is almost 5, and our son Sean, who just turned 2.

The dominant theme so far has been "Luggage." We have tons of it. Well, not literally tons, but, by my estimate, something in excess of 500 pounds. Five Hundred Pounds of Luggage: The Quarter Ton World Tour.

Most of it won't be coming back with us. We're carrying a cargo of secondhand clothing, videotapes, electronics, and miscellaneous other perfectly good castoffs of modern American life. We're also carrying a formidable collection of deodorants, soaps, perfumes, and sundry other cosmetics. All of these things will be given away to friends and family in Cambodia. I don't mind carrying it, except for the shampoo. Srey insists that people in Cambodia love American shampoo. Before we left, she went on a frenzied shopping spree, buying enormous quantities of shampoo. We're carrying bottles and bottles and bottles of it. Dandruff shampoo, baby shampoo, shampoo with conditioner.

Our friends Narath Tan and Dara Long drove us to the airport. We needed two vans, of course, since all that shampoo wouldn't fit in only one. Both Narath and Dara were nearly towed when they walked into the terminal with us after we had unloaded the luggage. The police had actually hooked Narath's car and were beginning to raise it when he ran outside. Incredibly, they unhooked it and let him drive away, thus demonstrating a clear difference between police tow truck drivers and the legendary "Lincoln Park Pirates" of Chicago yore.

Despite my sheer terror at the thought of taking two small children on a flight halfway around the world, the journey was fairly smooth. Anna is a good traveller, and she is old enough to understand that sometimes boredom is unavoidable. Sean, mercifully, slept for much of the trip, and never cried for more than thirty seconds. He also accomplished something many adults would envy: he slept through all three takeoffs, and all three landings.

We flew from Chicago directly to Tokyo, arriving after about 12 hours. The flight, aboard a new 777, is smooth. The only misadventure occurs when a gold chain from my wife's bracelet becomes stuck in the tray table hinge. It takes three flight attendents and I about ten minutes to extract what is left of it. At the airport at Narita, however, my daughter gets a bad scare. My wife is in front of us, heading up an escalator, holding our son. Anna is next to me, pulling her beloved Tweety Bird suitcase. At the top of the escalator, her shoelace is pulled into the escalator, sending her sprawling. She screams, terrified, unable to pull her foot free. A planeload of passengers is spilling up behind her. I grab her and yank her foot out of the shoe, pulling her away from the crowd. She's crying and shaking, but is otherwise unhurt. An older American man pulls her shoe out and brings it over to her. Once she knows that her PowerPuff shoe is undamaged, she's fine. Welcome to the Mysterious East, where escalators come alive and try to devour your shoes.

We're housed for the night at the airline's expense in the ANA Narita Hotel; it's nicer than the accomodations to which I'm accustomed. I turn on the TV and channel flip until I find something worth watching: sumo wrestling. It turns out to be not all that interesting; in every match we watch, the bigger wrestler wins.

In the morning, it's raining lightly. We take the bus back to Narita and await the flight to Bangkok. The aircraft for the next segment of the trip is an older 747. Like the previous 777, this plane has a video camera that gives passengers a pilot's-eye-view of the takeoff. Neat.

We arrive on time in Bangkok, and make our way to the departure gate, which seems to be miles away. The lounge for the Bangkok Air flights is deserted. I go back to make sure we're at the right gate. It turns out that we are at the right gate, but we were supposed to go the the transfer desk first to check in for the flight. However, the staff at the departure gate checks us in without forcing us to return to the transfer desk.

About a half-hour before the flight is supposed to take off, a bus arrives to take us to the jet. It's a fairly small turboprop, and it's about three-fourths full. Soon we're in the air, and in less than an hour we're descending into Phnom Penh's Pochentong Airport.

Next: "I See Cambodia!"

Part Two: "I See Cambodia!"

It's not quite 8PM as we step off the plane. It's hot, but not quite as hot as Bangkok. I'm shocked as we walk into the terminal: It's nothing like it was when I was here in 1991, nothing like it was when my wife left Cambodia in 1992. It's still under construction, but it's much more polished than before: clean tile floors, nicely painted signs in Khmer and English.

A friend of my wife's, Pou Phon ("Uncle" Phon), is waiting for us just beyond the immigration checkpoint. Unlike 1991, when visas were practically impossible to obtain, they are now issued upon arrival. The whole process takes less than five minutes. The baggage carousel is just beyond the immigration checkpoint, and by the time I'm through with the visa, they are loading the last bag onto a cart. Pou Phon, it turns out, has a friend of his own at the airport: the head of customs. We have three carts piled high with precarious stacks of baggage. The customs man pushes the first cart toward the customs inspection point and motions for us to follow. He looks at the inspector and gestures at the three carts. "Ayvan theang aw nee men bhat chaayk thay," he says. ("All this luggage is OK. Don't check it.") And that concludes our customs inspection.

As we walk outside, I'm struck by a smell. It's hard to describe; it's a mixture of damp heat, wet pavement, sweat, exhaust smoke, and a hundred other things that I can't identify. Memories come rushing back to me: it's the smell of Bangkok. It's the smell of Phnom Penh. We are back.

Just outside, Srey's sister Lung is waiting, along with her husband and children. They hug briefly, but there are smiles only: no tears. We jam our luggage into a small van and one other car, and then drive to the house we'll be renting in Phnom Penh. It's actually the second floor of a house, and it's right next door to Lung's home. The drive takes about 20 minutes, and in that time I'm struck by several things. Phnom Penh at night seems strangely dark to anyone accustomed to the eternal mercury-vapor glow of American cities. The streets we travel are, for the most part, without streetlights, and most of the buildings are dimly lit from the inside only. But the streets are teeming with people; motorcycles and bicycles crowd the roads, and people are gathered outside nearly every building.

We turn off of Monivong Boulevard onto a small side street. It's unpaved, and incredibly bumpy. Another left turn, and we are at the building that will be home for the next two and a half weeks: House No. 47, Street 75, Sras Chork, Khan Donh Penh.

We stay up a couple hours, visiting and unpacking. Pou Pon asks us if we want to accompany him to Arei Ksath the next morning, where the Catholic Relief Service is distributing rice to victims of recent flooding. We'll have to get up early, but we know that jet lag will prevent us from sleeping anyway.

At about seven the next morning, we head to the ferry that goes to Arei Ksath. The ferry is a small wooden boat, big enough for a couple dozen passengers and a few motorcycles. It's still early, and it isn't very crowded. As we're preparing to depart, one of the crew falls overboard. Another almost falls when a young woman pushes him playfully. "Joi!" he shouts. The word is part of my limited Khmer vocabulary; it's their equivalent of the "F" word.

Arei Ksath is across the Mekong from Phnom Penh. Or, more accurately, it's across the Mekong and the Bassac. The Mekong and the Bassac converge in Phnom Penh. Arei Ksath is just on the other side of the point where the two rivers come together. Midway across the water, there is an odd sight: there is a visible line in the water where the two rivers meet. Each is a distinctly different shade of brown.

At Arei Ksath, we walk down a muddy side street, to a small wooden house. By local standards, it's a nice house. It's built on stilts, as are most Cambodian homes. A single monk sits beneath a blue plastic tarp which is suspended as an awning from a neighboring building. A few representatives of CRS are there, handing out rice and a few other items according to a list of designated recipients. It's a quick process, and soon we're back on the ferry. We're all exhausted, and we don't go anywhere else for the rest of the day.

The following day, we again accompany Pou Pon to another CRS relief effort. This one is in Prey Kongreach, a very small village in the countryside beyond Kien Svay. We'll take a boat to Prey Kongreach, but it takes about an hour and half to reach the point where we board the boat. This is the road that my wife walked in 1975, when the Khmer Rouge evacuated Phnom Penh. She points out the temple where they slept on the first night of the exodus. The road is narrow, but reasonably well-paved. Look closely along the way and you'll see low-tech recycling practiced everywhere. My favorite example: a fence made from the steel stampings that reinforce car hoods.

The boat we take to Prey Kongreach is a long, canoe-like wooden vessel, powered by a small motor which spins a propeller at the end of a long shaft. There are about a dozen passengers in our boat. First we cross a small inlet. There is a temple under construction on the opposite shore. It's a gorgeous work of architecture: on the top is a four-headed statue like the famous monument from Bayon. Made from dark gray concrete, it looks ancient. Stairs lead down from the temple toward the water, and the stairways are framed by Nagas, seven-headed serpents that figure prominently in Khmer design. The most wonderful detail is an enormous crocodile that appears to be climbing out of the water, crawling menacingly toward the temple.

We sail out of the inlet and into the open water of the Mekong, then across to where a small stream flows into the river. Our pilot manuevers the boat into the stream through a narrow gate; my best guess is that the gate is there mainly to guide the boat into sufficiently deep water. At times, there is nothing but marsh on either side of us; at other times, there are trees and fields, and at times we pass through small villages. We pass a few other boats. As we pass, they lift the propeller out of the water to avoid striking our propeller. This sends a spray of water over whoever happens to be sitting nearby. There is a monk travelling in our boat, and to everyone's amusement he is sprayed with water not once, but twice. It takes about forty minutes to reach Prey Kongreach. We land across from the gate of the village temple. A crowd of about a hundred people is waiting in front of the temple. Several monks are seated in front of the temple. As guests, we're given fresh coconuts. Part of the top of the coconut is chopped off with a cleaver, and a hole is cut to insert a straw. Fresh coconut milk, in its very own container.

When the last of the rice has been distributed, the monk who arrived with us suggests that we should all leave quickly. Inevitably, the distribution of aid is followed by complaints about who did or did not receive assistance. The monks and the officials from CRS have already done their best to ensure that the aid has gone to the people who genuinely need it, and there is nothing to be gained by staying long enough to hear recriminations.

Heading back in the boat, the heat is stifling. Children play in the stream in front of several of the houses. Here and there, fishermen work on their boats, and women wash clothing. It could be the year 2000. It could be 1950. It could be 1900.

The house we're renting is fairly new. More accurately, the part of it we're living in is new: while the building itself might be thirty or forty years old, the second storey was added within the last few years. There are three bedrooms, a dining room and kitchen. The living room is open on two sides, and a comfortable breeze flows through during the day. Each bedroom has its own bathroom. There is no hot water, but given the climate, no one really cares. There are no shower stalls, either. Instead, each bathroom has a handheld shower head, and a simple floor drain. The rather informal approach to plumbing is also apparent in our room's air conditioning arrangment. The air conditioner runoff drains into a hose which is routed through the bedroom wall and into the bathroom, where it drains right on top of the toilet paper holder. Fortunately, we discover this Severely Inconvenient Design Flaw before a moment of Dire Need. There are a few elements that can only be described as fortifications: there are padlocked, wrought-iron gates for the doors and windows, and there are jagged bits of broken glass embedded in the wall outside the kitchen door.

The house is also home to a number of geckoes. They are incredible to watch. They're small, mostly around three inches long. They can move incredibly quickly. They walk up to insects almost casually, and then, when they are only a few inches away, they dart forward and snap the bugs up in the blink of an eye. A few bugs are lucky. The geckoes approach them, look them over, and walk away. Those, apparently, are the bugs that taste lousy. At night, you can sometimes hear the geckoes making a strange, clicking sound. It sounds almost like someone tapping rythmically on a pane of glass.

On Friday, Sean - two years old - is sitting on the floor in the living room, and he peers out through the railing toward the ornate gate on the other side of the street. The gate is flanked by two large pillars, each adorned with an apsara. Suddenly Sean turns to me. "I see Cambodia!" he exclaims.

Later in the day, Narath Tan's brother, Tom Tan, visits us, and we go briefly to the waterfront, where the annual Water Festival is underway. Teams of oarsmen in long, brightly painted canoes are practicing for the races that will soon take place. The riverbank is crowded with onlookers.

While we're there, we stop at a small storefront to send email to Narath. There are several such shops scattered throughout the area. For a couple dollars for an hour of access, you can browse the web at your leisure. It's a bit slow, but it works.

As Tom and I talked, he asked me if I remembered Devi. Of course, I said. We had spent alot of time together the first time I was in Cambodia: Tom, Thary, Devi and I. She was pretty, and she laughed alot; I thought that she had a crush on Tom. "She died," Tom says suddenly. Three years ago, she was struck by a car in Phnom Penh, and killed. I shook my head. Bitter irony: to survive the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, and to die crossing the street. The traffic had seemed almost comical at first. It wasn't funny anymore.

On Saturday, we travel to a small village in Takeo province. I've been warned that the roads are very bad, but all things are relative: they are far better than what I encountered in 1991. Here and there, one can still see the damage from the floods that devastated Cambodia in the previous months. In some places the pavement drops off sharply where the floodwaters have washed away the very edges of the road. In many other areas, rice fields that should be bright green are brown and dead.

It takes about an hour to reach our first destination. It's a small village along the main road to Phnom Penh, and we're here to deliver some money and clothing to a friend's family. Overseas Cambodians often send money to friends and relatives who are still in Cambodia. I wonder about the scale of this impromptu aid; in volume and efficiency, it may well outpace the contributions made by voluntary agencies and foreign governments.

The family we are visiting sells secondhand clothing out of the front room of the house. A small glass case holds a few packs of cigarettes. Three small children watch us shyly. They're enormously amused by my digital camera: they laugh at their own image on the camera's LCD.

We head off of the main road to go to another, smaller village in the countryside. The narrow dirt road cuts through rice paddies and skirts the base of a small hill. It's hot and dusty. Now and then we have to stop to let an oxcart pass, or for a dog sleeping in the road. When we reach our destination, my wife unpacks a box of clothing as our children amuse themselves. Anna swings in a hammock beneath house, and Sean watches a pig and some chickens.

On the way back to Phnom Penh, we stop at Tonle Bati. Tonle Bati is a small lake. Nearby, there is an Angkor-era temple. The temple is small, and not much of it remains. Here and there, intricately carved stones hint at a beauty that vanished centuries ago.

We eat lunch at a small shelter along the edge of the lake. Children are swimming and laughing in the warm brown water. While we're eating, a family of foreigners walks past: mother, father, and two small children, all with bright blonde hair. It's not the first time I've seen foreigners, but it's the first time I've seen another family.

Part Three: To Kompong Som and Back

On Sunday morning, we get up early for a trip to Kompong Som. Located on the Gulf of Thailand, Kompong Som is one of the few deep-water ports in Cambodia. The main problem with travelling to Kompong Som is that it means lots of driving. And in Cambodia, driving is plainly and simply dangerous. Devi's death kept coming back to me.

Generally speaking, there are few good roads, there is an enormous amount of traffic, and there seem to be precious few rules governing how people drive. There are virtually no stop lights and virtually no stop signs. Theoretically, people drive on the right side of the road, but in reality that's not quite true: people drive wherever they can find - or create - an open path. To some extent, the lack of stop signs forces drivers to adopt a flexible approach to lane usage. For example, a motorcyclist trying to turn left onto a busy street can't wait for a break in traffic; there won't be one. So instead, he'll simply turn left into the lane of oncoming traffic, first driving alonside the curb, then slowly drifting across the lane as small gaps open between the oncoming vehicles. Eventually, he'll make it into the right-hand lane, where most (but not all) the other vehicles will at least be travelling in the same direction. It's somewhat easier for cars; although motorcycles and bicycles make up the vast majority of the traffic, car drivers all adhere to a very simple principle: "I'm bigger. Get out of my way." In countries with a more developed infrastructure - wider highways, clear-cut laws, highway patrols, driver education, and so on - drivers are largely responsible for their own fate: "I'll stay in my lane, I'll stop at the red lights, I won't go too fast, and I probably won't have an accident." But in Cambodia, every driver depends on proper evasive manuevers by every other driver: "I'm going to drive in the left-hand lane, into oncoming traffic. The other drivers will see this, and they will get out of my way."

Before we left Chicago, my wife and I debated whether or not to bring a car seat for our son. Eventually, we decided that with all the shampoo we were carrying, we didn't have room. We thought we'd buy one in Cambodia, then give it to someone when we left. But it turned out that there was no point in buying a car seat: most of the cars we rode in had no seat belts.

It's just before dawn as we leave Phnom Penh. Our driver is wearing a full-length coat. To him, the 70-plus degree temperature is terribly cold. We make our way out of the city, weaving past bicycles, motorcycles, cyclos, and slower cars. Our driver seems to have an element of machismo; the idea of actually behind someone is simply unacceptable, and he makes every effort to pass anything and everything ahead of us.

Close to Phnom Penh, the landscape is generally flat. Farther south, the plain is broken up by small mountains. The road is lined with small shacks. An astonishing number of them, even the some of the most decrepit, have TV antennas.

Eventually the road stretches up into the hills, and for a while the countryside could easily pass for Kentucky or Tennesee. The illusion is dispelled when, midway through a mountain pass, we come across a small group of roadside markets. A line of wooden outhouses stretches alongside the road; the doors list the price of these accomodations as 500 riels. On the opposite side of the road, a long line of spirit houses awaits offerings from weary travellers.

It takes about three hours to reach Kompong Som. We crest a hill, and suddenly the blue ocean is visible in the distance. Compared to Phnom Penh, Kompong Som seems tranquil. We stop at a beach on the outskirts of town, and it's wonderful: a small park, peppered with tall trees, leading down to a beach that gleams with white sand at the edge of enticing blue-green water. The outline of a handful of small islands is visible in the distance.

There is a line of small open shelters at the edge of the park; several of them are topped with bright blue plastic tarps, and they remind me of something from Cambodia's sorrowful past: the makeshift tents at the refugee camps that once dotted the Thai-Cambodian border.

The water here is warm. My daughter coats herself with the white sand, laughing. My son, two years old, laughs merrily in a sea that is ten thousand miles from his home. My wife stares out at the blue water, and I wonder what she is thinking. I believe that her father brought her to the ocean when she was a child, but I don't want to ask. I wonder if she is thinking about her father, or her brother, or what life would have been like without the Khmer Rouge.

Late in the afternoon, we head back toward Phnom Penh. Now and then it rains lightly. Two or three times, we have to stop to let cattle cross the highway. It's early evening when we arrive at the roadside markets in the middle of the mountain pass. We stop briefly, and our driver burns incense and prays before one of the spirit houses, asking for a safe trip back to Phnom Penh. I would have prefered to have skipped the prayer, and just driven more slowly.

As we enter the city, Sean and Anna press their faces to the car window. Russie Boulevard is lined with flags in preparation for a visit from the Chinese premier. Sean stares at the flags, and at a billboard with an image of Angkor Wat. "I see Cambodia. It's Angkor Wat, Anna." His big sister is indignant. "I know that, Sean!"

We spend most of the next day relaxing at home, then walk to Wat Phnom. The name means "hill temple," and indeed that is what it is: a small temple at the top of a hill. The road encircles the hill, and a few carnival rides across the street provide entertainment for children who have no great interest in stupas and stone lions. And, just like years before, elephant rides are another popular attraction. My children want to ride, so it's up the ladder we go, onto the wide seat on the elephant's back. The elephant lumbers around the base of the hill slowly, and we bounce from side to side. The highlight of the ride is when the elephant reaches up with his trunk and pulls a branch off of a nearby tree, then begins chewing it. For some reason, Anna and Sean find this wildly amusing.

That night we drive across town to visit one of Srey's friends. The carnival atmosphere of the Water Festival is still in full swing. The Royal Palace is lit up with strands of bright white bulbs. Stages and bandstands glow, and carnival rides are everywhere along the waterfront. I marvel at the businesses along Norodom Boulevard. Motorcycle dealers. Stores selling cellular phones. Lucky Burger. Ecstatic Pizza. It's a spectacle that would have seemed impossible nine years earlier.

At Chbar Umpuu, however, we turn off the main street, and suddenly things haven't changed at all. It's very dark. The road is unpaved, muddy, and deeply rutted. It's lined with tiny, crude, dimly-lit shacks where vendors sell a handful of goods. A little girl steps out of one house and squats to pee at the edge of the road. Cambodia is getting better, but poverty is never far away.

On Tuesday, we travel to Kantuot to visit more friends, a very old couple whose son had known my wife since she was a child. I had visited them in 1991, and again I was shocked at how much things had changed. I recalled the first trip vividly. It had been a hot, dusty journey through the countryside, and what stood out most were the abandoned buildings: burned down, bombed out, shot apart, there were whole hamlets that had the look of ghost towns. Now, all but two or three small buildings had been rebuilt.

We spent the next day in Phnom Penh. Slight oddities abound. There are, for example, Naga Cigarettes (Virginia Blend). I wonder exactly what the good state of Virginia has to do with the Cambodian cigarettes named for the mythical serpent. And of course, there is Angkor Beer. Ah, yes, beer is what the ancient kings had in mind when they erected sandstone temples in the middle of the jungle. Not being much of a beer drinker, I'm consuming Ozone brand drinking water. It's bottled in Cambodia and is, according to the label, "qualified for the drinking water quality standard of Thailand." And, ever expanding its empire, it turns out that the Coke I drink is also bottled in Cambodia. Other goods are uniquely Asian, such as the plethora of Sanyang motorcycles spilling through the streets. Or the huge, gleaming steel tanks that are mounted atop many of the buildings: simple but effective solar water heaters.

Around Phnom Penh, most of the buildings that were hotels in 1991 were still hotels. A few - like the Monorom, or the Royal - seem to have existed since the dawn of time, albeit sometimes under different names. The city even boasted a pair of Best Western hotels. The hotel I had stayed in in 1991 - the White Hotel - had been remodelled, and reincarnated as the Pailin Hotel. A friend told us that a few months earlier, there had been as gas explosion at the Pailin, and two or three people had been killed, and several more injured.

Although there are far more cars now than in 1991, motorcycles, scooters, and bicycles still dominate the streets in terms of sheer numbers. The number of people who can be crammed together on a single scooter is astonishing. It's not at all uncommon to see four adults on one scooter. From time to time you'll see a family of five, and on a few occasions I saw six - six - people on a single small motorcycle.

There is a dark side to the country's improving economy. Cambodia has become a popular destination with sex tourists. Walking back from the market, I pass a hotel frequented by foreigners. A Cambodian man sitting on a motorcycle in front whispers to me in a conspiratorial tone: "You want small lady? Girl? I know." I stare at him coldly and walk away, a bitter feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Part Four: Angkor, Snakes, and Khmer Krahom

On Thursday, the 16th, we got up early to catch the express boat to Siem Reap. My wife's cousin, my sister-in-law, and two of her children are with us, as are Thom and one of his friends. The boat leaves at about 7AM, from a small dock just north of Chroy Chungva bridge. The boat is narrow, with three seats on each side of a middle aisle. Several passengers prefer to ride on the top of the boat. The boat works its way up the Tonle Sap. We watch Phnom Penh disappear, and then the river begins to widen. Soon, it becomes not a river, but a lake, so wide that the banks are no longer visible. A TV screen in the front of the boat provides the entertainment. First there is the obligatory video of a karaoke show, and then a passable Chinese gangster movie, dubbed into Khmer. That's followed by Hard Target, the only genuinely good movie Jean-Claude Van Damme ever made. The whole trip takes about five hours. Jean-Claude has only killed half of the bad guys when the boat docks at Siem Reap.

The dock is chaotic. It's swarming with passengers, taxi drivers, and vendors. There are several drivers who work for the boat company. The company calls ahead with the passenger list, and by the time the boat gets to Siem Reap, there are drivers already waiting, holding signs with a passenger's name. Our driver has a small van. We pile in and make the short drive to Siem Reap city.

We get a room at the Vimean Thmei hotel (No. 012 Street Sivatha, Mondol 1, Quarter 2, Siem Reap). At $15 a night, it's a bargain. We have lunch nearby, and then head to Angkor. For me, a three-day pass cost $40. For everyone else, it's free.

At night, back at the hotel, the electricity goes off briefly. A hotel employee is at the door within minutes, carrying a supply of candles and matches. The power comes back on in about ten minutes. During the two and a half weeks that we spent in Cambodia, we experienced four or five such outages, none lasting more than five or ten minutes. It was yet another measure of how far Cambodia has come: in 1991, the electricity was off more often than it had been on, and the water was intermittant as well.

The sky is cloudy, but it's still hot. Soon, we can see the towers of Angkor Wat rising above the trees. It's a striking vision. But we elect to see Angkor Wat the next day. Our first stop will be Bayon.

Bayon is stunning. Built around 1200 A.D., it is smaller than Angkor Wat, but the design is eerily haunting. Numerous towers rise above a mountain of stone; each tower has four massive stone faces, staring out passively into the surrounding jungle.

In one of those odd coincidences that happens when travelling, while we're atop Bayon, my daughter collides with a woman and her husband. It turns out that they are from Chicago.

Just as we were leaving, it began to rain, and we headed back to the hotel. On the way back, my wife pointed out to me a handsome two-storey house. Decades ago, it had been the home of Dap Chhuon, a revolutionary leader who had fought against the French prior to Cambodia's independence.

In the morning, we head back to Angkor. Our first stop is Pre Rup, a large but badly decayed temple not far from Siem Reap. Afterwards, we head to Banteay Srei. In comparison to many of the other temples, Banteay Srei is fairly small, and not very well preserved. However, it's noteworthy for the quality of its carvings, which are said to be deeper and more detailed than those on most of the other ruins. Banteay Srei also occupies an interesting footnote in the literary world: the writer Andre Malraux was once jailed for stealing a stone apsara from a wall of the ruins at Banteay Srei, in the days when the temple was still enshrouded in jungle. And oddly enough, as if to highlight the theme of archeaological plunder, we happened to be at Angkor at the same time as a movie crew. They were filming a movie version of "Tomb Raider," the popular computer game. It was the first Hollywood film shot in Cambodia since Lord Jim in 1964.

At Banteay Srei, my daughter finds one thing that amuses her at least as much as the temple ruins: a tiny flowering plant, with fern-like leaves. Touch the leaves, and they quickly shrink away from your hand.

Not far from Banteay Srei, a road crew is at work. Most of them are women. They carry buckets of large rocks, carpeting the entire length of the road with softball-sized stones. Later, a steamroller will run over the rocks, cramming them deeply into the dirt. For a while, we drive on roads that are "paved" in this manner. It's difficult to decide whether or not it is really an improvement over the bare dirt.

Our next destination is Koulen. Situated in the deep, forested mountains northeast of Angkor, Koulen is popular for a temple perched high atop a tall stone mountain, and for a beautiful waterfall. Koulen requires separate admission from the rest of the temples at Angkor. We stop at a checkpoint along the road, where I pay the $20 admission. A small monkey is tied to a tree near the gate, and my children crouch nearby, laughing happily. I wait at the checkpoint while the three guards talk with our driver. On the wall of their shack, a poster shows a variety of landmines, grenades, artillery shells, and other bombs. Mines and other unexploded ordnance remain a serious problem in rural Cambodia.

Getting to Koulen is not easy. Beyond the main temples, the roads are all unpaved, and they curve first through flat countryside, then head up into the mountains. Heavy forest stretches away on either side of the road, and there is almost no traffic.

It takes a couple hours to reach Koulen. We stop briefly at a small outpost of roadside stands, where Tom buys a live snake. It's a couple feet long, and he wears it around his neck for a while. Then he puts it around my daughter's neck, and she's delighted. Cambodia, to her five-year-old eyes, is amazing: in Phnom Penh, you have the Cartoon Network on TV all day long, and out here in the countryside, you can wear a live snake around your neck.

At the Koulen waterfall, we rest in the shade, and climb down the hill to the bottom of the falls. We clamber out onto the rocks in the middle of the stream; my nephew straddles two rocks and dunks his whole torso into the cold, clear water. The temple, we're told, is about a kilometer away by foot, and we decide to drive there. As we're on our way back to the car, we run into the very same Chicago couple that we had met at Bayon the day before.

The temple at Koulen is nothing when compared to the large temples of Angkor, but it is impressive in its own way. It's hard to imagine the effort that would have gone into its construction. Inside the temple, carved into the stone, is a massive reclining Buddha. It's delightfully cool inside the temple, and the view is wonderful.

As we're leaving, Tom stops and donates his snake to the temple. Perhaps they would free it for good karma; I don't know. I'm certain, however, that a snake would not have been particularly well-received in the collection plate of the churches of my youth.

We leave Koulen by the same roads that brought us there. About an hour out of Koulen, as we're riding through the forest, I see a line of boys walking along the side of the road. There are eight or nine of them, probably fourteen or fifteen years old. The boy in front is holding an old carbine rifle. All of them are dressed similarly: olive drab pants, with either no shirt, or fatigues. The last boy is holding a hoe; the others are empty-handed. The boy with the rifle glares at the van as we pass, and I feel a chill. I don't know who they are, but I know what they look like: Khmer Rouge.

Tom, in the front seat, turns to Srey. "Khmer krahom," he says. Khmer krahom: literally, "red Khmer." The Khmer Rouge. The driver says something in Cambodian. "He says they are Khmer Rouge," Srey says. "He says out here there are a lot of them. Out in the countryside, outside Siem Reap city, there are alot."

It's an odd, unsettling thought, but not altogether surprising. An army of thousands does not vanish overnight, even in defeat. I sit in silence, thinking, and wondering. In the middle of the jungle, where were they going?

When we return from Koulen, we return to Angkor and head first to Ta Prohm. Although Angkor Wat is the most famous temple in the Angkor complex, many visitors - myself included - prefer Ta Prohm. When restoration work began on the temples in the 1920s and 1930s, vegetation and sediment covering many of the monuments was cleared away. At Ta Prohm, however, the trees that had invaded the temple were left largely intact. The result is breathtaking. To reach Ta Prohm, one first walks through a huge gateway, topped by massive stone heads. A long path leads through dense jungle. Birds and insects shriek at in a loud, unending, high-pitched whine. Magnificent trees overturn massive stone walls. Giant roots strangle entire buildings. Sandstone carvings are split apart at their seams. It isn't really an accurate picture of what the temples looked like before their restoration, but the effect is stunning.

Not far from Ta Prohm is the largest of all the temples: Angkor Wat. It is, in fact, the largest religious building in the world. Its five towers dwarf the surrounding trees. Long regarded as the national symbol of Cambodia, its image has graced every regime's flag since Cambodia received her independence in 1953.

A long stone causeway leads through a massive wall and into the temple. The scale is astonishing, and the intricacy is dazzling. It is almost impossible to imagine the structure as ever having been new. Climbing the steps to the central tower, one can sense the passage of hundreds of years: the stone steps are worn away to almost nothing. From the top of the temple, the vision is one of conquest: an image of stone and perserverence, defeating the jungle.

At ground level, reality once again encroaches: a small village of grass huts - a set for "Tomb Raider" - has been built on the grounds of the temple.

Hollywood, apparently, has come to Cambodia in other ways as well. Tom and his friend are still inside the temple, and the rest of us sit on the low wall beyond the baray, casually sipping Cokes. When Tom arrives, he says something to my wife, in Khmer. The only word I catch is "Rambo." Srey turns to me. "He says..." she thinks for a minute. "Arnold Schwarzeneggar is inside."

"Rambo??" I ask.

"Yes," she says, but then suddenly realizes that she's mistaken. "No, not Schwarzeneggar. What's his name?"

"Sylvester Stallone," I say, laughing.

"Yeah!" And she begins laughing, and tells her family that she really liked Stallone when she'd lived in Cambodia. But in Cambodia, his movies were always dubbed into Khmer. When she came to the United States, she went to see Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot, and was horrified to hear his real voice for the first time. After that she stuck with other action heroes: Schwarzeneggar, Van Damme, Norris, and, of course, Jackie Chan.

Personally, my own feeling was that regardless of the sound of his voice, Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot should have been enough to persuade anyone to never see another Stallone movie.

The next day, we arise early to catch the boat back to Phnom Penh. I regretted not being able to stay in Siem Reap longer. Two days did not give us nearly enough time.

On the way back we sit across from a young Khmer woman, travelling with her mother. Sean had been running a slight fever for a couple days, and he began to cry. The young woman looked at him with pity. She was eating fried frog legs, and she handed him a small piece. He ate it happily and stopped crying. Since we're going downstream, the trip back to Phnom Penh takes slightly less time than the trip to Siem Reap. By noon we're home, just in time to avoid a pouring rain.

Part Five: Artists, Pringles, and Fish in the Streets

On Sunday, November 19, we visited Svay Pithoubandith, a woodcarver, at his home in Phnom Penh. Like most Cambodian houses, it is built on stilts. He works beneath the house, on a low wooden workbench. In front of the house there is a crude tablesaw, its blade attached by a long belt to a gasoline-powered motor. It's the only machine in sight. On the workbench, there is a heavy blue vise. The chisels and gouges that he uses are hardened steel shafts, with no handles of any kind. A few blocks of wood of varying lengths are used as mallets. On the bench are the products of these simple tools: several intricate busts of apsaras, and a flat panel with a partially carved apsara framed by lotus-leaf scrollwork. Apsaras, goddess-like female dancers, are a common feature of classical Khmer architecture. The apsaras, however, are not the most impressive piece. Sitting atop the bench is the most stunningly detailed woodcarving I have ever seen: A model of Angkor Wat. I ask how long it took to carve. Seven hours a day, says Svay, for three months. And it still isn't finished. He shows me the plans. What is on the bench is only the center portion of the temple. There are two more walls that will surround the central towers. Does he have a buyer for the piece? No, he says. Originally the American embassy had expressed an interest in buying it. But that was before Hun Sen's 1997 coup; Svay says that in the wake of the coup, some of the embassy staff was withdrawn, and when a new ambassador was appointed, the new staff was not interested in the carving. Svay is talking to groups in Chicago and Lowell, Massachusetts, and may be able to come to the US to do commissions for Cambodian groups in those cities.

Later in the day I take some time to read the Phnom Penh Post. It is the edition for November 10-23, 2000. Some of the articles provide a telling glimpse into Cambodia today:

• Prostitution may be decriminalized and regulated by the government.
• A six-year-old child in Kampong Cham was killed by a convoy of diplomatic vehicles. The convoy did not stop. Police refused to disclose details of the incident, and the child's parents do not know where the diplomats were from.
• A Buddhist activist in Kampong Thom was murdered, and local monks say that the assailants are linked to a development firm that is in a land grab attempt in the area. The firm is led by Ly Kam Say and several senior provinical government officials. Say is the former Kampong Svay District Governor.
• Eleven youths drowned in a river in Prey Veng after their boat sank.
• Police in Pailin are offering differing versions of a October rocket attack on the compound of the Pailin governor's residence; some sources say that the attack was a warning from disgruntled business partners, but police now claim that the rocket was fired accidently by a drunken bodyguard.
• The Council for the Development of Cambodia reports that foreign investment in Cambodia for the first nine months of the year 2000 was the lowest in six years.

There is one additional item in the Post that did not seem important at the time: "Phnom Penh municipal police are investigating the distribution on October 26 of more than 200 leaflets allegedly produced by the shadowy 'Cambodian Freedom Fighters' dissident organization. The leaflets called for a general uprising against the Government..." On November 24, that small item would suddenly seem much more significant.

As I type these notes, there are some geckoes on the ceiling above me, and twice they shit on the keyboard of my Toshiba laptop.

Life in Cambodia has its own odd rhythyms. On the advice of our doctor, we don't let our children bathe in tap water: we fill a large plastic wash basin with either Ozone drinking water, or with water that has been boiled. Anna seems to find the process vaguely amusing; Sean seems to find it slightly annoying. It seems like an unnecessary precaution to me, but the thought of contending with a sick child 10,000 miles from home is enough to persuade me to err on the side of caution. I'm reminded of a joking comment made by a doctor friend many years ago, before my first trip to Cambodia: "Don't drink the water, don't eat the food, and don't breathe the air." Of course, on that trip I became horribly ill. Served me right for having breathed the air.

On Monday, we visit a friend's mother, not far from the Olympic Stadium. Her son-in-law picks us up at home. On the way there, turning onto a small dirt side street near his house, he stops the car suddenly and climbs out. From the back seat, I can't tell why he has stopped. He walks around to the front of the car and bends down to pick something up from the road. It's a live fish, similar to an eel, nearly a foot long. Bad luck for whoever lost it, good luck for us.

The son-in-law is a member of the ruling Cambodian People's Party, the party of Prime Minister Hun Sen. The CPP is far and away the dominant political force in Cambodia. It has established a dismal human rights record, and corruption is rampant. As we're eating lunch, the son-in-law tells us that there has been unrest within the CPP recently. The party, he says, is wracked by a three-way split. One faction supports Hun Sen. Another supports Chea Sim, the president of the National Assembly and longtime leader of the Party. The third faction supports former premier Heng Samrin. For now, Hun Sen has the loyalty of the soldiers, and in Cambodia, arms equal power.

On Tuesday, November 21, we spend much of the day shopping in preparation for the next day, when we will host two parties: a bon (memorial ceremony) for Srey's father, who disappeared in 1977, and a birthday party for Anna, who will be 5. One of our stops is the Olympic Market. As we are going inside, I notice the wares of one of the vendors near the door: cooked silkworms and tarantulas. Not quite the snack food of my dreams. Incredibly, while we're in the market, I hear someone shout, "Srey! Bruce!" I turn around to see Om Chanbo, one of our friends from Chicago. Chanbo had travelled with me when I first went to Cambodia in 1991. She had been in Cambodia for a few weeks, and was staying not far from the Olympic Market.

At home in the afternoon, my nephew Buthea takes my son Sean out for a motorcycle ride. When they return, Sean is happily seated in front of Buthea, eating a Pringle. I start laughing, not so much from the sheer strangeness, but simply from the fact that it is an image that I never would have thought could belong in my life. I picture myself at age eighty, bald and absent-minded, looking back, remembering my son as he is now: a two-year-old, sitting on a motorcycle in Cambodia, eating Pringles Potato Chips.

Part Six: Two Parties

On Wednesday morning, Srey gets up early to begin preparing for the bon. Her sister, her cousin, and friends pitch in, cooking, cleaning, running errands. They cook outside, in front of Lung's house, where the bon will be held. It's a relatively small affair, since not many from Srey's family survived.

The monks arrive shortly after the food has been prepared, and the ceremony begins. The monks sit at the front of the room, chanting in Pali. Family and friends sit on the floor, palms together in sompeah.

One of the items in front of the monks is a dish of water; the monks bless the water, and then, using a whisk, gently splash it over the mourners. I've attended many such ceremonies over the years; usually, I'm toward the back, and I'll be hit with only a few drops. This time, however, Srey and I are sitting at the front, and I get completely drenched. Soaked to the skin. Maybe it's karma: this is what I get for laughing when the monk got soaked in the boat on the way to Prey Kongreach.

At a break in the ceremony, one of the monks invites us to visit his temple in the afternoon. Srey still has to prepare for Anna's birthday party, but Anna and Sean and I walk to the temple. It's only a few blocks away. We find the monk in a small building behind the main temple; he brings us fresh coconuts and tea, and he describes his hopes of someday studying in the United States.

In the evening we prepare for Anna's party. All of the children in the surrounding buildings are coming; there is cake, sandwiches, candy, and the Cartoon Network on the TV. Incredibly, every single child who comes brings a present of some sort. Some of the children are very, very poor, and yet every last one brings a present. I look at my daughter, lucky and rich beyond belief compared to the children around her. Later I look at some of the presents she has been given. One present is a tiny package of kleenex, with cartoon dinosaurs on the wrapper. I put it aside, vowing to keep it for years, until my children are old enough to know how special this small gift is.

The party is a distinctly American affair. We sing "Happy Birthday," and as Anna blows out the candles Tom and his friend spray the children with silly string. The highlight of the party is Srey's improvised pinata. A clay pot is filled with candy and taped shut, then suspended from a rope. Clutching a broom handle, Anna swings wildly a few times, then succeeds in smashing the pot. Candy showers over the floor. The children cheer and scramble after the bounty. The candy, I discover later, is durian-flavored. For the uninitiated, durian fruit is renowned for its horrible, raw-sewage smell, but people who like it claim that it is delicious in spite of its smell. Personally, I think it smells horrible and tastes just as bad.

The next morning I walk down to Sisowath Boulevard, then north toward Chroy Chungwa Bridge. In 1991, the bridge served only as reminder of the country's history of war. Destroyed by saboteurs in 1972, it was still unrepaired nearly twenty years later. Now, only a single small detail hints at its history: the handrail along the center span does not match the rest of the bridge.

There are a few bullet-shaped towers spread across the bridge. Guards with AK-47 rifles are stationed inside. Apparently, the fear of sabotage still lingers. Below, small fishing boats are scattered across the river. The river seems to stretch away to infinity. Coming back, I pause on the curved stairway that leads back down from the bridge. A crowd of young men are practicing volleyball nearby, the Cambodian flag waving in the wind above them.

Later that morning, Srey, Sean, Anna and I travel by car to Kien Khleang, on the other side of the bridge. We're not going anyplace in particular; we drive north, stopping when we see something that seems interesting. At one point we drive off the main road, back to an old temple. Concrete steps lead down into the muddy brown water of the Mekong. A few children are playing in the water at the bottom of the stairs. They look at me in shock, then run up the stairs.

Back in Phnom Penh we stop briefly at Wat Unalom. A few beggars, most likely the victims of landmines, wait patiently for the next busload of foreign tourists. A series of statues shows the Buddha at various stages of his life. Flowering trees are blossoming at the bottom of the temple steps. It is the very essence of Cambodia: beauty and tragedy, side by side.

I feel a mixture of emotions. There is a part of me that is homesick. I miss Chicago, and I can't wait to be back. But there is another part of me that is deeply sad: I know that I'll miss Cambodia. I can't believe that the trip is almost over. I feel a strange, disoriented sense that time has warped, and that the last two and a half weeks lasted no more than a handful of hours.

In the afternoon, we travel to the "Russian Market," so-called because it is situated in a part of town where many Russian advisors had lived in the 1980s. Many of the vendors, I was told, had learned to speak Russian, only to find that their skill was of little use following the collapse of the Soviet Union. My wife buys some silver; I buy a note of Khmer Rouge currency. Printed by the communists prior to their 1975 victory in the civil war, the money was never circulated. The Khmer Rouge abandoned the use of currency immediately after seizing the capital. Now, it has nominal value as a macabre souvenier for foreign tourists. On the way back, we stop at Monument Books, on Norodom Boulevard, a fine bookshop with a good selection of books on Asia, and many travel guides. We buy a few books and postcards, and in another reminder of just how much Cambodia has changed, we pay with a Visa credit card.

Part Seven: "There has been sporadic shooting throughout the night..."

On the morning of November 24, I wake up early, intending to go out to take a few photos. My wife is already up, and she is talking with her aunt. There has been fighting during the night. A lot of fighting. A lot of people got killed. Fighting where? I ask. Here, they reply. Here, in Phnom Penh, close by. Near the railway station.

I shrug and dismiss these as rumors or exaggerations. I want to go out, since it's our last day here, but my wife has to go visit the neighbors, and the children are still asleep. She goes out, and I wait.

Soon Pou Phon's son brings me an envelope. Inside, I find a paper bearing the seal of the US Embassy. It reads:

"WARDENS - PLEASE PASS THIS INFORMATION TO AMERICAN CITIZENS IN YOUR ZONE

HOTEL MANAGERS - PLEASE PASS THIS INFORMATION TO YOUR AMERICAN CITIZEN GUESTS

NOTICE TO AMERICAN CITIZENS IN CAMBODIA
NOVEMBER 24, 2000

There has been sporadic shooting throughout the night. Authorities report to the Embassy that this clash was caused by a small resistance group who fought with security authorities through the night. A number were apprehended, but some remain at large. Cambodian authorities are still seeking to apprehend other people who were involved and to restore order. Until order is restored, the streets are still dangerous.

The U.S. Embassy will be closed today, Friday, November 24, 2000.

We strongly advise American citizens to remain indoors until it is clear that the authorities have restored order."

My wife returns at lunchtime, and as we're eating the TV broadcasts an interview with a police commander; he says that several of the attackers were killed, and that some of his own troops were injured. According to the report, an informant within the group had tipped off police before the attack. We see footage of bloody corpses, displays of captured weapons, and a motley gang of prisoners, their heads bowed.

A few days after the attack, Agence France-Presse reports that the Cambodian government has blamed the attack on the "Cambodian Freedom Fighters," the same group that had supposedly distributed anti-government leaflets the month before. Eight people were killed, and 14 others injured; 82 others are arrested. Rumors persist that the whole incident was staged by Hun Sen as a pretense for future repression; even one acquaintance whose husband is a member of the CPP believes that the incident was nothing more than theatre.

Outside, everything seems normal. My nephew takes us to a pharmacy next to the railway station. The streets are crowded; if there is any unusual police or military presence, it isn't immediately visible.

It will be my last chance to take photos, so I grab my cameras and walk south for a block or two. A pair of young monks are walking nearby, and I put a hundred-riel note into their basket. As I'm walking, I see my nephew riding up the street on his scooter. My son is sitting in front of him, smiling broadly. I realize, suddenly, that I feel completely at ease here, as if I belong.

I walk toward Wat Phnom. On the way, I pass the National Library. On the sidewalk in front of the building, hundreds of potted plants form a small jungle; I gather that it is something of a sidewalk greenhouse. As I'm standing among the flowers, I see something moving out of the corner of my eye, and I turn. A small monkey is perched atop the fence. I snap its picture, and as the shutter clicks, it scampers up a tree. In the leaves high overhead, a family of monkeys is concealed among the upper branches.

Part Eight: Goodbyes

When I return to the house, I spend a little time packing, and then go out one last time to try to retrieve an email that our friend Narath had sent to me, with an attached form that his sister needed. One of Tom's friend's took me by scooter to an Internet provider along Sisowath, but the modems were not cooperating, and we finally gave up. By the time I returned to the house, it was time to get ready to leave. Srey was plowing through our clothes, giving away most of what we had been wearing for the last three weeks. (One item, a Microsoft BackOffice t-shirt that I had gotten at a seminar, showed up on our driver's back only an hour later.)

I take a hurried shower, and by the time I'm dried off, it's time to leave. We pile into two cars for the trip to the airport. The sun has disappeared. Clouds are gathering, and it is slowly getting darker. We wave and chim reap leah the people who have been our neighbors, and then the car slowly bounces down the bumpy dirt street, around the corner, and we are on our way home. Inside the car, we're quiet. We're all anxious to be home, but all sad to be leaving. Sean falls asleep immediately.

On the way to the airport, we see the first visible sign of the previous night's firefight. A gas station along Russie Boulevard has been looted; the plate glass window at the front of the shop is gone, and nothing remains inside. My wife's aunt, sitting in the front seat, says that there is still blood in the street. But it's raining now; the blood will wash away.

When we arrive at the airport, we wait outside, in front of the terminal for a while. The rain has already stopped. Srey's cousin brings durian ice cream for Anna and Sean, but Sean is still sound asleep. My wife, who has shed so few tears on this trip, is tight-lipped. She didn't want to cry, and felt that the less she talked, the less likely the tears would escape.

At six o'clock, we decide to check our baggage. Srey's family remains outside, and Lung is holding Sean. Srey and Anna and I walk into the terminal, and suddenly I feel very, very alone. It isn't just that Sean is not with us: for weeks, virtually everywhere we have gone, practically everything we have done, we have done with Srey's family. And now, walking toward the door of the terminal, it's only us. We're going to travel halfway around the earth, and it will be only us. I feel a strange sense of loneliness. I try and imagine how my wife must have felt, almost nine years ago, leaving Cambodia alone, leaving behind the only world she had ever known.

Inside, Pou Pon's friend - the customs official - is on duty. He grabs two luggage carts and helps us with the bags. Then we walk back out to where Srey's family is waiting. I take Sean in my arms, and he slowly awakens. We say our last goodbyes, and walk slowly into the terminal.

As we wait for our flight, I marvel at the changes in the airport, just as I had when we'd landed weeks earlier. So many things have changed in nine years. The departure lounge is clean and well-organized. There is an elegant bookshop, a play area for small children, a coffee shop, an Internet access shop. At the front of the lounge, there is an architect's model of the proposed renovations to the airport. Pure white, it is the embodiment of Cambodia's quest to join the future.

Cambodia 2000:
Part Nine: Travelers and Conquerors

Our flight leaves at 7:50. When it is time to board, we walk out across the tarmac toward the jet. I remember the creaky old Soviet-made turboprop that had flown me out of Cambodia many years before. Now, we climb aboard a brightly-painted, factory new Bangkok Airways 717. Before the plane is even off the ground, the flight attendents bring small puzzles for Anna and Sean. For the first time, Sean is awake when we take off. It's dark now, and as the plane lifts off, the four of us stare out the window, watching the lights of Phnom Penh disappear.

In about an hour we land at Bangkok, then wait for our next flight. Both children sleep for a while, but about an hour before our flight leaves, Sean wakes up, feverish, and begins to cry. He cries for a long, long time, but when we finally board the flight at 2:15 AM, he falls asleep quickly, and sleeps through almost the entire flight to Tokyo.

We have about two hours before our plane leaves, and during that time I realize that I am at the center of a new empire: Japan, home of Pikachu and Hello Kitty. Round-faced kittens and Pokemon will conquer the entire world, and they will rule until they are dethroned by some other lovable entity that will capture the hearts of children everywhere. In Robert Stone's novel A Flag for Sunrise, a drunken anthropologist delivers his verdict on the power of popular culture: "Mickey Mouse," he says, "will see you dead." Maybe it will be a mouse. Maybe it will be a frog. Maybe it will be a fluffy robot. It could be anything. In an odd way, it gives me hope. Marx and Engels may have altered history, but Homer Simpson and Scooby Doo have seen them dead.

We buy Cokes, we nibble on bread, we pantomime reassurance to an elderly Indian woman who doesn't know whether or not she is at the right gate. Anna colors in her new coloring book, and Sean plays with a toy jet.

And then, suddenly, it's time for us to board the flight. We're already exhausted, and Sean is still running a fever.

I can assure you that you do NOT want to take a feverish, exhausted two-year-old on a trans-Pacific flight, and the less said about it, the better.

It is 8AM when we arrive in Chicago. We look like zombies. Narath is waiting for us as soon as we clear customs. We exchange greetings and pile the luggage into his van. It's shockingly cold, but to me it feels wonderful. I'm home.

I've noticed one odd thing during the years that I have traveled: when I return from a long trip, I almost always have very odd dreams. This time, shortly after we returned, I dreamed that I was watching "The Andy Griffith Show," and the story involved someone who had ridden into Mayberry on a brand new, year 2000 model Japanese superbike. And at the end of the show, while the theme song played, the credits scrolled across the screen, written in Thai letters.

Perhaps there is some deep lesson in that dream. Or perhaps there isn't. Perhaps there is some deep lesson in traveling. Or perhaps there isn't. There are many different reasons to travel. You can see incredible places and astonishing monuments. You can win bragging rights, by being able to say, "Oh, of course, I've been there." Or you can travel to see the world beyond your own horizons. Maybe you can learn to see things as they are. Maybe you can learn to see a small package of tissues and know that it is precious beyond words. Maybe you will learn to imagine a world where it is only natural that Pikachu should reign, and that Sheriff Andy Taylor should speak Thai. Or maybe one day you will just peer out through a balcony railing, and suddenly you will exclaim, "I see Cambodia!"

And it will be true, and it will make perfect sense.

Thanks...
I'd like to take a moment to thank all of the people who helped us make this trip, and the people who donated clothing and gifts for us to take to Cambodia, and the people who were kind enough to feign interest when we returned: Lung, Buthea, Theary, Sela, Prak Sunnary, Narath Tan, Dara Long, my Mom, my sisters Maureen and Michele, Sheryl Winters, Carol Southern, Debby Coffman ("Debby, this skirt fits me. Can I keep it?"), Denise Witczak, Sue Ziegler, Chorvy Tep, Malis Yang, Pou Phon, Soyan Saom, Soyean Saom, Dena Tes, Nimol Tith, Lavet Buth, Savan Chuon, Puon Va, Puon Haing, Chivith Huoy, Chenda Prak, Sue Moongthaveephongsa, Perry Colburn, Tim Melcher, Terry Lutrick, Dave Sugasa, Anne Christensen, and Cassi Ortiz.